


build me a city and call it jerusalem

by bethejerktomybitch



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Manipulative Gellert Grindelwald, Original Percival Graves Needs a Hug, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18668026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethejerktomybitch/pseuds/bethejerktomybitch
Summary: Graves seems mostly alright when they find him.Seraphina can tell he isn't, of course, she's known him long enough for that, but she doesn't realize how bad it really is until it's almost too late. And by then, a deal with the devil might be the only option she has left.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a Richard Siken poem called "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out", which I adore. Leave kudos or a comment if you like it.

They’ve all but given up by the time they finally find him.

 

They, of course, means Fogelman and Beckett and all the other council members, who’ve been pushing to call off the search and put the resources of the MACUSA to use chasing leads on Grindelwald instead. Seraphina herself has never quite been able to extinguish that little flame of hope flickering in the back of her mind, no matter how hard the rational part of her brain reasoned that there’s no possible way for Graves to still be alive.

 

Hoping against all logic is not the thing a president should do, she knows that, but she supposes it’s all just as well now, because somehow, impossibly, _they found him._

 

She’s there when they carry him out of the dark, heavily warded basement Grindelwald kept him in, and there’s a strange sort of tightness in her chest. He’s thin, too thin, unsettlingly so, and bruises and cuts are covering what’s visible of his skin. His hair is longer than she’s seen it in years, and she feels a sudden urge to brush it away from his face.

 

Needless to say, she doesn’t. She’s been president for quite some time now, in the public eye for even longer, and she’s become rather adept at schooling her face into a well-composed mask that doesn’t betray any of her feelings, at considering every action and every word carefully.

 

So she looks away, turns to the aurors that are standing behind her, all of them Graves’ people to the last. They look skittish, uncomfortable, clearly disconcerted at seeing their boss and leader like this, even McConnell, who’s usually almost as good at keeping his face blank as she is.

 

Seraphina squares her shoulders. If she cannot do anything about the mess of feelings swirling around in her own head, she can at least give the restless aurors something to do. “Secure the parameter.” she says. “Search for anything that might give us a clue about what Grindelwald was up to. And get magical forensics here.”

 

They nod and scatter, clearly thankful for the task. Seraphina takes a deep breath of the cold January air and makes herself look at Graves’ motionless form again. His stillness wakes something inside of her, a heavy sense of dread curling behind her breastbone, but when she focuses, takes a little step forward, she can see the slow rising and falling of his chest.

 

He’s alive, and that has to be enough for now.

 

* * *

 

Seraphina wants nothing more than to follow the mediwizards who take Graves away to the MACUSA medical wing, but there are other things to do, appearances that need to be kept. She is nothing if not dutiful, and so she goes through the motions, does all the proper things, slips into the skin of immaculate, unshakable President Picquery to explain the events of the day to the council and to the dozens of other high-ranking officials who seem to be appearing from every corner of the building.

 

She’s quite sure no one ever notices the roiling fear tightening her chest with every breath, but it accompanies her through every second of that exhausting day that will not end, a stark reminder that she is not as unshakable as she’s trying to convince everyone – and herself, to be honest – she is.

 

It’s after midnight, only a few employees who are either very dutiful or have nothing to go home to still at their desks, when Seraphina stands, allows herself a single shaky breath, and heads towards the elevators.

 

The medical wing is brightly lit, even at this time of night. A healer she doesn’t know meets her when she enters. He looks worn-out, spent, a bone-deep exhaustion that she can relate to all too well on his face.

 

“Madam President.” he says. “I’m Healer Browning. You’re here about Mr. Graves, I assume?”

 

“Yes.” Seraphina says, her voice carefully stiff. “How is he?”

 

Browning sighs heavily. “He’s alive.” he says. “I’m afraid that’s about all the good news I have.”

 

He pauses, as if trying to gauge her reaction, before he continues. “He was tortured, severely so, over the course of multiple weeks. His magic is weak, almost too weak for our sensors to pick up. In cases like this, we don’t… we don’t usually hope for any sort of recovery. The mind can only take so much before it breaks.”

 

Seraphina wants to scream. She wants to take Browning and shake him and yell _no, you’re wrong, this is Percival, not some barely trained recruit, his mind didn’t break, it wouldn’t, it can’t._ Instead, she only inclines her head slightly. “Is this your definitive assessment?”

 

Browning cocks his head, hesitates. “Well, not entirely.” he admits finally. “Unfortunately, we don’t know enough about the mind to say anything with certainty. For a definitive answer, we’ll need to wait.”

 

Seraphina gives him a cool smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Then we’ll wait.” she says.

 

A part of her wants to go in, sit with Graves, watch his breathing to make sure it never stops. But that’s not the sort of thing a president does for her co-worker. It’s not the sort of thing he’d want her to do either, so there’s really nothing she can do but go back to her office.

 

* * *

 

He’s unconscious for three days, and then he opens his eyes, scowls, and says: “So you figured out he wasn’t me.”

 

Seraphina isn’t there when that happens, though she would’ve liked to. But she is there afterwards, when he’s sitting up in bed, healers bustling around him, and various other officials waiting behind her for what Graves has to say.

 

She wishes she was alone with him. She wishes they were somewhere else. Because there is something in his eyes, barely noticeable to anyone who hasn’t known him as long as she has, she’s sure, and she can’t figure out if it means he’s mostly okay or mostly not. He’s speaking, though, and his voice is firm, so she pushes the worry into a hidden corner of her mind and listens.

 

“Grindelwald never told me any of his plans.” he says. “He’s arrogant, not stupid. I figured out some of it, that he was impersonating me to try and get to the Obscurial, but most of the time I was too… well, he kept me mostly unconscious.”

 

Seraphina doesn’t miss the unfinished sentence, and wonders what he was going to say. _Too out of it? In too much pain?_

 

His eyes roam over them. He doesn’t look at her, she notes, doesn’t once meet her gaze. Seraphina has known him long enough to have a notion why. There’s something he’s trying very hard to keep inside, to keep hidden, and he knows she’d see it if he gave her the chance.

 

The others are asking more questions. Seraphina wills herself to listen, to nod along. She can’t bring herself to ask him about his weeks of hell, however, even though he answers every question they pose to him in slow, measured words without any outwardly sign of distress.

 

Finally, there are no more questions. The officials stand, trickling out the door one by one. Seraphina makes to follow them, but something takes a hold of her, suddenly, a sort of desperate recklessness that she hasn’t felt in a long time. She turns and looks at Healer Browning, the only other person besides her and Graves left in the room.

 

“I would like to have another word with Mr. Graves.” she says. “Alone, please.”

 

Browning looks taken aback, but he nods after a moment. “Of course, Madam President.” he says. “I’ll leave you to it.”

 

When he slips out of the room, Graves’ eyes finally meet hers. He looks shell-shocked, like some of the no-majs and wizards she has seen returning from overseas, his eyes too bright and an air of fragility about his calm demeanor. Seraphina knows in that moment that he is not really alright, that he’s pretending to be unshaken because that’s the only way he knows to prevent himself from falling apart completely.

 

She takes a few steps forward until she’s standing at the foot of his bed. There are so many things she wants to say, but none of them seem quite right. _How are you?_ She knows that already, and he wouldn’t tell her truth anyway. _I’m sorry._ What good would that do anyone?

 

Graves saves her by speaking first. His composedness is mostly gone, and his voice sounds tired and brittle. “Did you really not know? The whole time?”

 

It’s not an accusation, she knows that, but Seraphina’s heart clenches painfully nonetheless, the guilt like copper in her mouth. “I didn’t.” she admits. “Not until after the Obscurus was destroyed on the platform.”

 

Graves looks at her blankly, and she realizes that he probably has no idea what she’s talking about, that no one thought to fill him in about the last few weeks’ events. So she tells him – Scamander and his beasts, the boy, finally Grindelwald’s unmasking.

 

She doesn’t miss the flicker of… she doesn’t know, something _,_ on his face when she mentions Grindelwald. It makes her chest ache for him, in a way that makes her feel as if they’re twenty again and his father has just died. _What did he do to you, Percival? What did he really do to you?_

Graves has told them the technicalities, of course – “the Cruciatus curse, a lot of the time, some legilimency, and he did something to my magic, I don’t know what” – but he said it with a cold detachedness, as if it had all happened to someone else. She doubts that the mental and emotional implications of Grindelwald’s torture could be boiled down into a single sentence quite as easily as that.

 

“How did he get to you?” The question slips out before she can stop it. Truth is, they’ve all been wondering how Grindelwald managed to get the better of Graves. Sure, the man is immensely powerful, perhaps matched only by Albus Dumbledore, but Graves is not someone you’d want as your enemy either. There should’ve been a duel, a fight, something. Two powerful wizards like that clashing, the magical disturbance should’ve been enough for them to pick up.

 

Graves scoffs, turns his face away. “I was wondering when you’d ask that.” he says.

 

He is silent for a very long time, staring at the wall somewhere to her left. There is a haunted look in his eyes, and she wishes she could take the question back if only that would that make that look disappear. Finally, he speaks.

 

“He got through my wards.” he says. “Recalibrated them somehow, so they went off on me when I came home. He got me with a shocker to the back when I was trying to turn them off.”

 

He takes a breath and then speaks again before she can answer, the words rushing out of him, almost tumbling over each other. “Sera, that… that shouldn’t have been possible. My wards were strong, you know that. He shouldn’t have been able to get through, not that easily.”

 

Seraphina can hear the words he’s left unspoken, hanging heavy in the air. _What if he gets through the wards that are holding him now too?_

 

And his fears aren’t unfounded either, aren’t born out of paranoia or some lingering effect of Grindelwald’s torture. She’s seen the wards around his apartment, an intricate web of enchantments and hexes layered over each other, woven through with strands of incredibly powerful magic. Graves’ wards are some of the strongest she’s ever seen, basically impossible to break through, and yet Grindelwald has done it with ease.

 

She takes care not to let these thoughts show on her face. Graves doesn’t need her doubts on top of his own right now, doesn’t need to know about the fear wound into a tight spiral behind her breastbone.

 

“I will make sure the wards binding Grindelwald are enforced.” she says in response to the question he didn’t ask. He doesn’t look reassured, but then again, she didn’t honestly expect him to. Graves has known her long enough to hear the hollowness of her reassurance, to deduce the fact that really, she has no idea if they can hold Grindelwald permanently.

 

“Let’s hope that works.” Graves mutters, a bitter note to his voice.

 

Whatever caused her to stay back and send Browning away flares up again, violently so. Suddenly she wants nothing more than to hold his hand and sit with him until that terribly lost and vulnerable look disappears from his eyes. But they’ve defined what they are to each other long ago, when she first ran for president, so she only stands up straight.

 

“You should get some sleep.” she says. “I imagine you’ll have to answer more questions at a full council meeting once you’re up for it.” He doesn’t say anything, but she can feel his gaze on her back on her way out.

 

In the doorway, she stops once more. Seraphina promised herself she wouldn’t give him an apology, because she knows it will inevitably fall short of what she’s actually feeling, a lifeless hollow thing that won’t change anything, but in the moment she can’t stop herself. She turns, looks at Graves. “I’m sorry, Percival.” she says. “I really am.”

 

He almost smiles, even though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Graves braves the council two days later. He looks pale and perpetually exhausted, but he answers the council’s inquiries with the same practiced calm he displayed at his earlier questioning. If Seraphina hadn’t known him as long as she has, she doubts she would have noticed the way he keeps glancing at the door and his shoulders tense ever so slightly whenever someone says Grindelwald’s name.

 

She wants to talk to him afterwards, but she’s cornered by McConnell and Lockwood, the interim head of magical law enforcement. By the time she manages to get away from them and their questions she doesn’t have answers to, Graves has slipped away. She spends the rest of the day with a buzzing sense of worry at the back of her mind.

 

When she comes home that evening, Graves is in her living room.

 

He looks up from where he’s sitting on the sofa. There are deep shadows under his eyes and she notices that he has his wand clutched tightly in one hand. When he speaks, his voice is hoarse, with an edge of something she can’t quite identify. “I couldn’t go back to my place.”

 

Seraphina doesn’t say anything. Instead, she heads to the cabinet, pours two glasses of firewhisky and sits down next to him. His hands are shaking when he takes his glass from her and downs it in one gulp.

 

She chooses not to comment on that. She simply asks “Another?” and Graves nods.

 

With a wave of her wand, the bottle of firewhisky comes flying towards them and fills his glass anew. This time, he takes only a small sip before he puts the glass down again.

 

Seraphina barely touches her own firewhisky. She’s looking at Graves, trying to read his thoughts in the lines of his face, but all she sees there is pain. “I didn’t know the healers had already let you go.” she says finally.

 

Graves scoffs. “They didn’t.” he says. “They wanted to run more tests. My magic still isn’t working properly.” He holds out his hand where two fingernails are missing. “I splinched myself, apparating here. Haven’t done that since I was seventeen.”

 

Seraphina shudders. The thought of someone messing with her magic like that makes her nauseous, and she can’t even begin to imagine what Graves must feel like. Vulnerable, probably, naked and defenseless without his magic to fully rely on. No wonder he didn’t want to go back to his apartment where Grindelwald got to him in the first place.

 

“You probably should have let them run the tests.” she says carefully. “They might figure out a way to fix your magic.”

 

Graves looks at her, his eyes half-closed. “You don’t really believe that.” he says wearily. “When did you become so blindly optimistic?”

 

 _When it was you that got hurt,_ she thinks for a moment, but of course, he’s right. Blind optimism is not the sort of the thing the president of the MACUSA should rely on, but then again, the president of the MACUSA also shouldn’t feel as helpless and lost as she feels right now.

 

Graves doesn’t seem to expect an actual answer to his question, which she is vaguely thankful for. He leans his head back, closes his eyes fully. His breathing is slow, even, but his fingers are still clenched around his wand and she doubts he’ll feel safe enough to fall asleep, no matter how exhausted he is.

 

Seraphina doesn’t exactly know why she begins to speak; perhaps it’s as much for her benefit as his. “Do you remember when I was doing my internship with the department of magical law enforcement in France?”

 

He opens his eyes slowly, looks at her. “Yes.” he says after a moment. “My father died while you were gone. You ended it early and came back.”

 

She smiles at him. “I did.” she says, and leaves it at that. She doesn’t need to say the rest out loud; she knows he can read them on her face all too clearly. _I’ll always be there for you. You’re not doing this alone._

It happens suddenly, startlingly. One moment Graves is looking at her, and the next his carefully maintained composure utterly shatters and he crumples in on himself, his shoulders shaking violently. It’s terrifying to watch him fall apart like this, and Seraphina throws aside any notions of their roles and what they’re supposed to be to each other she has still been holding on to.

 

She draws him into her arms, holds him as tight as she can, though he’s much broader and taller than she is, even after his captivity. She can feel his breath in short, ragged bursts against her skin, and something wet too. He’s crying.

 

Seraphina thinks of the last time she held him like this, fifteen years ago, after his father died, thinks of how much she loved him then. All in all, not that much has changed, no matter how much they’ve both been trying to make themselves believe these past few years that they are co-workers first and foremost, friends after that, and lovers never again.

 

“We’ll figure it out.” she promises him. “We’ll figure it out, Percival.”

 

 _And even if we don’t,_ she adds silently, _we’ll figure that out too._


	2. Chapter 2

Graves does fall asleep eventually with his head on her shoulder, but he doesn’t look peaceful even in sleep. He doesn’t stir when Seraphina slips away, which says a lot about how exhausted he really is; usually he’s the kind of person who wakes up at the slightest disturbance. His wand has clattered to the floor, so she picks it up and puts it on the coffee table where he’ll see it as soon as he wakes up.

 

After that, she stalks through every room of her apartment thrice, checking and enforcing her wards with every enchantment she can possibly think of. Her skin crawls every time she passes a window, as if someone is watching her from outside.

 

She pushes the thought aside as resolutely as she can. Enough that she’s let the lines between her and Graves blur to the point where they’re barely even there anymore; she can’t let herself fall victim to irrational paranoia now. Her place has all the protection the MACUSA and she herself can muster; Grindelwald is not getting in here, especially not because he’s currently locked up deep under headquarters, without his wand and under heavy guard.

 

Still, sleep does not come. She lies in bed with her wand right next to her, staring up at the ceiling, acutely aware of Graves asleep on the sofa in the next room over, of the fact that he suffered, is still suffering, because she didn’t realize that for weeks it wasn’t him at her side but an imposter.

 

Seraphina gets to her feet abruptly. She promised Graves that they would figure it out, and she meant it. And the first thing they need to figure out is how to get his magic back to normal. The collection of rare and advanced books in her study, she supposes, is as good a place to start as any.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t realize the sun has already come up until a voice behind her says: “Have you slept at all?”

 

Her hand twitches towards her wand out of instinct but then she realizes that it’s Graves, only Graves, leaning against the doorframe. He looks… well, not good, but better, less fragile and with that air of practiced composure about him again, even though he still seems like he could use about forty-eight hours of sleep.

 

Seraphina considers lying for a moment but then shakes her head. “No, not really.” she says.

 

Graves gives her a half-smile. “You should have.” he says. “You look tired.”

 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “I still look better than you do.” she says dryly.

 

His smile falls, and he runs one hand through his too-long hair, looking suddenly like he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. It’s an expression that she has rarely seen on him, and she finds it strangely unsettling. “You’re probably right.” he says quietly. “I don’t think I would have gotten an hour of sleep anywhere else though, so… ah, thank you.”

 

The whole situation feels awkward, uncomfortable, and it isn’t supposed to. Graves is one of the only people she trusts implicitly, the one person she always feels comfortable around, and she knows that the only reason things feel so oddly unfamiliar is that they’ve crossed a line that was drawn a long time ago, and neither of them quite knows where they stand with the other now.

 

“You don’t need to thank me.” she says. “But, Percival, you’re clearly not fine. We should…”

 

He interrupts her, grimacing. “Let’s not do this now, Sera.” he says, his mask of composure shifting ever so slightly and giving her a glimpse of what’s underneath. His words, she notices, are slanting into his mother’s Irish accent and have been yesterday too, something that only happens when he’s very tired or very distracted. She suspects he’s both right now. “I know we need to talk, but not now, please.”

 

Seraphina considers him for a moment. She knows what he’s trying to do, because she has done it a few times herself – bury the memories, wrap them in safeguards of detachment and passed time until they rarely come out but for the occasional nightmare. This, though, this whole situation they’re finding themselves in, seems too big, too fundamentally life-changing to be dealt with quite as easily as that. Still, she supposes it won’t hurt to give him some time before dissecting all the ways Grindelwald has violated him.

 

“Alright.” she says and stands, pushing the book that wasn’t providing her with any useful information anyway aside. “Do you want some breakfast?”

 

His lips curl into a grateful smile. “I’ll settle for coffee.” he says.

 

In the kitchen, Seraphina brews them two cups of strong, bitter coffee. Graves drinks his silently, both hands curled around the cup as if he’s trying to absorb the warmth. As Seraphina sips hers, she notices that his clothes are rumpled in some places and immaculate in others, as if he’s used a straightening charm that didn’t quite do its job. It tells her more about the extent of damage to his magic than anything he’s said to her; usually, he could perform a simple charm like that in his sleep.

 

The tightness in her chest is back, making her kitchen suddenly seem smaller than it is. Seraphina rises and clears her throat. “I’m going to get ready.” she says. “Help yourself to more coffee, if you want.” Graves only nods in response.

 

She goes through the motions of getting dressed without really thinking about what she’s doing. Her mind keeps wandering, keeps flashing her images of Grindelwald’s smile when Scamander unmasked him, of the way he carried himself tall and proud even when they led him into the dungeons, a glint in his eye as if he knew something they didn’t. They’ve caught him, foiled his plans by destroying the obscurus, won the game for all intents and purposes, and yet Seraphina can’t shake the feeling that the worst is yet to come.

 

It takes her two tries to put her headdress on correctly, and when she’s done she looks at her reflection in the mirror. “Get it together, Picquery.” she tells herself. The words sound feeble and unenthusiastic even to her own ears.

 

Graves is pacing in the living room when she returns and keeps glancing towards the windows, his wand tightly in hand as if he expects to be attacked any moment. He reminds her of a trapped animal, and that’s not something she thought she would ever think about him.

 

“Ready?” he asks. “Yes.” she says, though she’s never felt as not-ready to face the day. “Are you coming too?”

 

He shrugs. “I might as well.” he says flatly. “I doubt the council members are done with their questions yet, and the healers can run their precious tests.” He’s not usually that cynical, but Seraphina chooses not to comment, especially because his next words, spoken almost through gritted teeth, are: “I think it’s better if you side-along me, though. I’ll probably splinch myself worse if I try to apparate again.”

 

She can see the effort it took him to admit that clearly written into the lines of his face, and so she only offers him her arm silently. He takes it and she spins, pulling them both into the darkness.

 

Graves doesn’t land quite steadily at the MACUSA apparition point, swaying slightly for only a second, but it’s enough for Seraphina to notice. She wonders if all the others, the council members and healers, see how much he’s not okay, or if they buy into his act without question. It’s probably the latter; none of them have known him quite as long as she has, or spent years learning to read his face like a book.

 

He straightens as if nothing happened. “I’m going to go see Browning.” he says. “I’ll find you later.” He sweeps away without waiting for her answer, and Seraphina is reasonably sure that that’s because he fears she’ll comment on his unsteady landing and what that implies.

 

Lockwood is waiting for her in front of his office. His face is red, sweat beading his brow, and he seems out of breath as if he ran the whole way up here. He wasn’t her first choice for the interim head of department position – she would’ve preferred someone like McConnell, whose calm and no-nonsense approach she knows Graves has always trusted more – but the council pushed for him and she was forced to concede, mostly because she flat-out refused to take away any resources from the search for Graves.

 

“Madam President.” he says. “A word?”

 

Seraphina nods her head graciously and ushers him into her office, where he sits down in one of the chairs while she takes her place behind her desk. “What can I do for you, Lockwood?” she asks.

 

He gets straight to the point; at least that counts in his favor. “We think we’ve found traces of some of Grindelwald’s followers here in New York.” he says. “I need permission to send a team of aurors to trail them.”

 

Seraphina doesn’t allow herself to hope just yet. They’ve had traces before, of Grindelwald’s followers or of whatever he meant to use the obscurus for, and most of them turned out to be nothing but rumors and fancies. “What kind of traces?” she asks.

 

Lockwood is fidgeting with his sleeve as he begins to explain; she can’t help but wonder how a man as nervous as him ended up in magical law enforcement in the first place. “We found an apartment protected with unusual wards.” he says. “None of them outright illegal, but we had a guy from magical forensics look at them nonetheless. He says they were done with an unregistered wand. The apartment seems to have been hastily deserted. There were some letters inside, hints of places they might have gone.”

 

The lead seems solid enough, worlds better than old witches calling in who claim to have seen Grindelwald himself out and about. And besides, the aurors need something to do; they’re growing restless waiting for something they can’t even put their finger on. “Send your team.” she says. “But I want regular reports.”

 

Lockwood nods. “Of course, Madam President. Thank you.” He makes for the door, but before he can exit Seraphina speaks again on an impulse. “Take Goldstein.”

 

She knows Graves is fond of the young auror and has always seen great potential in her, even though Seraphina herself always thought Tina Goldstein carried her heart a little too openly on her sleeve for an auror, an assessment proven by the incident with the Barebone woman. But perhaps a bit of a personal stake is what they need right now, and Goldstein certainly has that; Seraphina knows she was fond of the boy who housed the obscurus (and died on her orders, but she doesn’t let herself think about that).

 

Lockwood looks puzzled but nods after a moment. “Yes, Madam President.” he says. Then he’s gone, and Seraphina suddenly finds herself aching to go with him, get back out into the field where she can actually feel like she’s doing something and not talking all day without ever saying anything. But of course, she left that behind long ago, after auror training, when she decided to go into diplomacy instead of active duty.

 

She still remembers how Graves reacted when she told him. “You’ll go crazy behind a desk, Sera.” he said. “Give it a year, and you’ll come join me in active duty again.” He didn’t know her as well he thought, it turns out, because here she is still behind a desk, though admittedly a much grander one than the one she started behind.

 

He was right in one thing, though: she feels rather like she might be going crazy right now.

 

* * *

 

The memo comes flattering in around midday. At first, Seraphina welcomes the distraction from the tedious paperwork and drawn-out talks with various council members and officials, but when she reads it her blood runs cold for the slightest moment. They want her in the catacombs.

 

She’s heard that in Britain they call that part of their government the department of mysteries, which makes it sound a lot more poetic than it actually is. Here, they have no such notions and simply call it the catacombs, one level still below the dungeons. It’s where they keep everything they can’t quite figure out, all the mysteries and secrets magic still holds for them. It’s where employees spend day and night digging into magical forces so primal they don’t even have words to describe them.

 

It’s where they brought the obscurus they took from Scamander.

 

He fought them on it, hard, but in the end he had no other choice but to surrender it, not if he wanted to leave the States a free man. He had come into the country with a suitcase full of illegal magical creatures after all, and even though Seraphina has begun to think that maybe Newton Scamander is more right about the nature of his creatures than the MACUSA, as the president she can’t be above using the threat of prison to get what she needs.

 

And they do need the obscurus; if they can learn more about the nature of its power, maybe they’ll understand why Grindelwald wanted the one inside the Barebone boy so badly.

 

Still, Seraphina shudders at the thought of the catacombs with their icy cold and their perpetual smell of something burning, the way you can feel the raw magic buzzing in the air as soon as you enter. But the president of the MACUSA is not the sort of person who lets some vague unsettling feeling stop her from her doing her job, and so she takes a breath, rises, and head towards the elevators.

 

The elevator only goes to the level above the dungeons, so she has to take the stairs for the last two floors. The heavy wooden doors to the catacombs loom before her, but they swing open soundlessly when she states her name in a clear voice.

 

The wave of magic hits her like a gust of hot air. Magic in quantities like down here is a bit like stepping into a too brightly lit room – it overwhelms you for a moment until you get used to it, and even then you never feel quite comfortable. Seraphina forces herself to take deep breaths until the thrumming of magic fades to the back of her mind where she can almost ignore it.

 

In front of her, the long corridor is empty, though she can hear voices and other noises she doesn’t want to know the exact source of behind the doors that line the corridor on both sides. The doors all look perfectly identical, no neatly written signs next to any of them like in the rest of the building, but Seraphina was here when they took the obscurus from Scamander’s suitcase, so she knows where to go. The third door on the right opens to a practiced flick of her wand.

 

The first thing she sees when she steps inside is the obscurus, floating in the middle of the room inside a suspension sphere. A handful of people are standing around it, most of whom she recognizes. There’s Laszlo with his long grey beard, petite Vivian Simmons, a tall, broad man who must be a new employee because Seraphina has never seen him before, and – _Graves._

Seraphina’s breath catches in her throat. He’s standing next to Laszlo, listening to the old man tell him something in his heavily accented growl. Even from across the room she can see that his jaw is clenched, his shoulders tense, every part of his body programmed for fight or flight as his gaze keeps flicking towards the obscurus. And on top of that he still looks exhausted, weary, the shadows under his eyes deeper already than they were this morning.

 

She wonders who thought it was good idea to let him down here, and realizes a second later that no one would say no to Percival Graves, even if they could see how much being in Grindelwald’s captivity really affected him. She has to bite her tongue to keep from cursing aloud.

 

“Madam President, thank you for coming.” says Simmons, the first to notice her. Graves’ eyes dart over to meet hers, and a number of emotions flicker over his face in quick succession. Seraphina doesn’t quite catch all of them, but she sees the guilt clearly enough.

 

This is probably why he’s down here, she realizes, even though it makes him more uneasy than all the rest of them, even though he’s clearly inches from falling apart again – because he thinks all of what happened is his fault, because he let Grindelwald get the best of him. Because he thinks it’s his responsibility to fix it.

 

It’s a very Graves thing to do, and something she would probably do herself. Yet she wishes she could tell him to go, make him leave before he pushes himself too far.

 

But of course, she can’t. To all the other people in the room, Graves is her second-in-command who says and does a pretty good job pretending he’s fine, and sending him away just because she worries about him more than she should is not something she can do, not without breaking all the rules she’s made herself keep for so long.

 

So she steps into the middle of the room, looks at Laszlo instead of Graves. “Tell me about the obscurus.” she says.  


	3. Chapter 3

Laszlo doesn’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know, leaving her wondering why they called her down to the catacombs in the first place, and yet she feels on edge by the end of it, her skin crawling with the untamed magic down here. She keeps glancing towards Graves, no matter how hard she tries not to, the urge to make sure he’s at least something close to alright stronger than any of her conscious efforts.

 

He seems tense and on edge all throughout, but keeps his face schooled into a stony mask that she knows is the result of years of practice. It’s probably as much as she can hope for, considering.

 

When he’s done, Laszlo assures her that he’ll keep her updated on any discoveries the make about the obscurus and its nature. Seraphina isn’t hopeful, but she smiles and thanks him and Simmons and the third man, who introduces himself as Charles Hoyt, nonetheless. She leaves perhaps a bit too hurriedly, the thrumming raw magic inside the room making her feel like she’s suffocating.

 

She can feel Graves trailing behind her, but she doesn’t turn, at least not until the heavy doors to the catacombs have fallen shut behind them. Then she whirls around, glaring at him. “What were you doing down here?” she asks sharply.

 

He swallows visibly, blinking at her. He looks even more exhausted now, as if he might collapse any moment, keeping it together inside the catacombs evidently having taken up most of his remaining energy. “Sera, I… I can’t tell you.” he says hoarsely. “Not here.”

 

Anger whips up in her chest like a flame, frustration making her fingers twitch with the urge to hex that stubborn bastard. Deep inside, Seraphina knows that the only reason she’s so angry is because she’s worried nearly out of her mind for him, but knowing that doesn’t make the acidic taste on her tongue disappear. She feels stretched thin, almost transparent, like a rubber band pulled so taut it’s only moments from snapping.

 

She curls and uncurls her fist, makes herself take a deep breath. “Alright.” she says, her voice tight with only barely controlled emotions. “Alright. Come with me.”

 

They ride the elevator up to the executive level silently. Graves keeps one hand on the wall, as if he’s struggling to stay upright. Seraphina moves to stand closer to him out of instinct. She’s never realized before how deeply ingrained her protectiveness of him is into her very being, and it almost scares her now.

 

Once in her office, Graves slumps into one of the chairs, his face sagging in a mixture of relief and exhausted surrender, seeming like he’s all but about to fall asleep in her office chair. Seraphina wants to hug him and hold him close, because she has never seem him that vulnerable, not even after his father’s death, but there are other things that need to be handled first.

 

Originally, she meant to talk to him right here in her office, make him tell her whatever he’s trying so hard to keep hidden, but he looks so utterly spent that she can’t bring herself to ask him anything. Instead, she says: “Come on. You need some rest; I’ll side-along you to my apartment.”

 

With a visible effort, Graves sits up straight. “I’m fine, Sera…” he begins to say, but she cuts him off with a sharp gesture. “Drop the act, Percival, you’re not fooling me.” she says. “You’re clearly not fine, and you shouldn’t even be here, you should be resting. I’ll apparate you home and we can talk later, when I’m done here.”

 

For a moment he holds her gaze as if he means to argue, but then all the fight goes out of him abruptly. He stands without another protest and takes the arm she offers him silently. When she spins into the familiar nothingness, she is immensely thankful for her status as president that allows her to apparate to and from almost anywhere in the building, regardless of wards.

 

This time, when they land, Graves stumbles and would’ve fallen if not for her hand quickly reaching out to steady him. He staggers, holding on to her shoulder, and for a moment she’s sure he’s going to pass out. “Shit.” he breathes out.

 

Seraphina eyes him worriedly, and when he seems to have found his balance again she asks: “How did you even make it here in mostly one piece last night?” Graves snorts weakly. “Dumb luck?” he suggests.

 

He keeps his hand on her shoulder as she leads him down the hallway towards the guest room, and she can feel how unsteady he is on his feet, struggling to stay upright with every step. She wonders if that’s only tiredness, or something else, something horribly sinister, that Grindelwald did to him. Her money’s on the latter; he’s usually great at making do with a bare minimum of sleep.

 

Graves drops down onto the bed heavily, closes his eyes for a moment. Seraphina stands in the doorway and looks at him, sees the haunting memories and bone-deep exhaustion etched into every line and angle of his face. Her own guilt flares up again, filling her mouth with copper; she can’t quite remember anymore what it was like to not have its bitter taste coating her tongue constantly.

 

“I have to head back to MACUSA.” she says, fighting to keep her voice even. “Try to get some sleep while I’m gone, okay? We’ll talk when I get back.”

 

He looks up at her from hooded eyes. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sera.” he says, his voice low and gravelly. Seraphina shivers from head to toe, memories she has long banished to the farthest corner of her mind bubbling to the surface, making her heart beat faster.

 

She leaves before she does anything she’ll regret.

 

* * *

 

Her mind is somewhere else for the rest of the day, making it hard to focus on the problems and grievances, some smaller and some larger than others, that the president of the MACUSA has to deal with every day. She keeps thinking of Graves – the haunted look in his eyes, sure, but also the way he made her heart flutter with one look, as if she was still a little girl and not the most powerful woman in all of wizarding America.

 

Seraphina thought that all this was behind her, thought she locked the part of her that would probably always be in love with Percival Graves securely away when she first ran for the presidency and they both agreed she could not be seen consorting with her director of magical law enforcement on anything but a strictly work-related basis. It hurt back then, like ripping her own heart out of her chest, but Seraphina was always pragmatic; this was the job she always wanted, a job in which she could actually change something, and Graves was only a man. They were both young, and she didn’t believe that there was only one great love of your life; they would fall in love again, and it would stop hurting.

 

It did stop hurting, eventually, to the point where she could look at Graves and see only a colleague and close friend – if she didn’t allow her mind to wander, at least – but she never did fall in love again. She wonders if he did, and feels her chest clench with an ugly hint of jealousy that makes her feel ashamed of herself.

 

And now – now she almost lost him, and her world is crumbling down around her and everything is getting away from her, most of all those feelings she’s tried so hard to keep at bay.

 

Seraphina wants to cry. She wants to sleep for days. She wants, most of all, to apparate home and pretend that she and Graves are the only two people in the world. But she’s still president and can do none of these things, so instead she pulls herself together and shoves all her feelings into a corner of her mind where she can only barely feel them, buzzing just at the edge of her consciousness. They will have to wait until later.

 

* * *

 

It’s almost midnight by the time she finally apparates home. She tiptoes towards the guest room and finds Graves asleep sprawled in the middle of the bed, his shirt off to reveal a large, sunken scar running from his sternum all the way down to his abdomen.

 

The scar tissue is angry and red, ragged as if someone tried to gut him with a dull blade, and there are other scars too, fine lines crisscrossing his whole torso interspersed with barely healed curse-marks. Seraphina’s stomach roils, horror making her taste bile in the back of her throat. She knew Grindelwald hurt him, of course, but she didn’t know it was quite so bad, quite so nauseatingly brutal. Naïve of her, perhaps, but how could Graves possibly have hidden this from her? How did the healers even let him go like this?

 

Her horrified exhale is enough to wake him. His eyes flutter open, panic filling them for a moment, before he recognizes her and relaxes minutely. She can see the exact moment he realizes she’s seen the full extent of his injuries.

 

“Sera.” he says, his voice roughened by sleep. “I… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

 

Seraphina swallows. The question, childish as it is, slips out before she can stop it. “Does it hurt?”

 

Graves sits up slowly, scar tissue that looks like it has only just formed rippling and shifting as he moves. It looks like it must be excruciating, barely an inch of his skin left untouched. Finally, he speaks, his voice flat. “Not much, right now.” he says. “I barely feel the small ones. But whenever I try to use my magic, it feels like I’m being gutted alive.”

 

Not much – Seraphina’s known him long enough to know that by that he means a considerable amount of pain. And when even he describes something as feeling like being gutted alive, that usually means anyone else would barely be able to function through the pain. It’s a miracle he’s even able to perform any spells at all, no matter how weak they are.

 

“What did the healers say?” she asks. Her voice sounds hollow, empty, a strange contrast to the emotions swirling around inside her brain.

 

Graves gives an awkward little shrug. “Not much.” he says. “They’ve never seen a curse like this. Their best guess is that every time I use magic it drains what little I have left, until…”

 

He doesn’t finish that sentence, but he doesn’t have to. It hangs in the air above them like the proverbial sword of Damocles, all sharp edges and deadly metal. _Until there’s nothing left._

Seraphina’s chest constricts with horror. Losing one’s magic completely is a death sentence, everyone knows that. There have been few documented cases of it happening, none of them curse-related as far as she knows, but in every single case the wizard or witch that lost their magic died. Even the obscurus down in the catacombs, which is barely more than a parasitic destructive force, was the only thing keeping its host alive; when Scamander extracted it from the little girl, she died like all the others.

 

The ground is swaying underneath her, her legs like rubber. There’s a strange ringing in her ears, and something alive inside her chest, clawing its way through her heart. _I can’t lose him,_ she thinks. _I only just got him back._

A voice that sounds like her father’s says: _You didn’t even notice he was gone, stupid girl. You wouldn’t be in this mess if you had just noticed._ Seraphina bites her tongue to keep from yelling at the voice to shut up, and tastes blood.

 

She only notices Graves is talking to her when he takes her hands in his, standing right in front of her. “Sera.” he says. “Seraphina. Talk to me, please.”

 

She wonders how he is so calm. Then she looks into his eyes and realizes that he isn’t. Calmness is relative, composure a mask, and she’s been learning how to put it on flawlessly ever since she was a little girl in Savannah, Romain Picquery’s only child, who was expected to be perfect all the time. She can fake it now too, if that’s what it takes to keep her from falling apart completely.

 

“That’s why you were down in the catacombs.” she says, because there’s so much more she wants to say but that’s the only thing she can trust her voice with. “Because they are working with unbound magic. You were hoping they knew a way to fix yours.”

 

Graves gives her a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “See, that’s why you were a Horned Serpent and I was just a Wampus.” he says, in a pitifully transparent attempt to lighten the mood. “You’ve always been smarter than me. It took me two days lying around in the medical wing to even think of the catacombs, and you figured it out right away.”

 

Seraphina takes a shaky breath, ignores his clumsy distraction. “Did they?” she asks, fear of what his answer is going to be making her throat tight.

 

Graves’ smile falls. “No.” he says. His hands, she notices, have begun shaking again around hers. “I only talked to Laszlo, didn’t want more people than necessary to know. He said he’d look into it, but he didn’t sound hopeful.”

 

There’s a flicker of betrayal somewhere deep in her chest, inconsequential against all the rest. But it’s easier to fathom, not so overwhelming as to make her world collapse, so she plucks it out and chooses to deal with it instead of all the other feelings making the room spin around her. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday?” she asks. “You knew already, didn’t you?”

 

There’s another question that comes with that, one she leaves unspoken. _Didn’t you trust me?_ Graves reads it in her face with an effortlessness that should scare her.

 

“Sera, you know you’re the person I trust most in the world.” he says. Then he pulls his hands away, turns so she can’t see his face when he says: “It’s just… saying it aloud makes it real. I didn’t… I thought I’d be fine if I just pretended none of this ever happened.”

 

Seraphina wishes that too, more than anything. But there’s not a spell on earth that can make things un-happen, no amount of regret and guilt that can change the past. It doesn’t matter how much she wishes she would have noticed Grindelwald in the midst of the MACUSA, how much she wishes they would have found Graves before Grindelwald did whatever he did to him. Because she didn’t notice, they didn’t find him, and now they’re here and they can’t go back.

 

She starts to say something – what she’s not sure – but the words die in her throat, and the only thing that leaves her lips is something between a breath and a whimper.

 

Graves turns and looks at her again. His eyes are full of unshed tears, and in the dim light from the hallway his scars look terrifying, a map of whiteness and shadow, skin carved open and pulled back together without a care, huge chunks of it missing. Inside her chest, the living thing finishes shredding her heart to pieces and _Merlin,_ why isn’t she bleeding out, why isn’t this killing her?

 

Seraphina crosses the room without thinking. She wraps her arms around him, not sure if she’s trying to comfort him or herself, and feels him trembling ever so slightly under her touch. Graves leans his forehead against hers, his eyes fluttering shut. “Sera.” he breathes out, and then he says nothing more.

 

She doesn’t know how long they stand there like that. Graves is still shaking, his breath coming too fast and too shallow, and she wants to tell him that it’ll be alright, they can still figure this out, but the words feel wrong, foreign and too large, and they never make it off her tongue. The bloody shards inside her chest are still beating, somehow, pounding in her ears.

 

Graves pulls away suddenly, startling her. Time slows to a crawl as his eyes find hers once again, warm and brown and so full of desperation. Then he leans down and his mouth slams into hers.

 

Seraphina finds herself opening her lips for him immediately, softening against him, one hand sliding up into his soft black hair. The kiss tastes like blood, from when she bit her tongue earlier, and like tears – his or hers, she can’t tell, they’re both probably crying at this point. He is kissing her as if the world’s ending, as if he will never get to kiss her again and is trying to memorize the shape of her mouth.

 

She should stop, she knows she should. But the world is ending, in a way, her world as she knew it at least. Tomorrow, she’ll have to find her rationality that seems to have vanished under the weight of what Graves told her; tomorrow, they’ll have to think about the future and what they are going to do next, but today she is going to let herself have this.

 

Graves stops kissing her, gently brushes her cheek instead. “Stay?” he asks, his voice impossibly soft.

 

How can she say no?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, but I haven't abandoned this story, I promise! Thank you for all of your lovely feedback, I'm glad so many of you like this story. I hope you enjoy the new chapter!

The pain is the first thing Seraphina feels when she wakes up, shards of glass inside of her chest, before she’s even awake enough to know why it’s there. Another second passes until she notices the arm around her waist and Graves’ warm breath against the back of her neck.

 

Seraphina keeps her eyes closed and lies very still. If she doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe, maybe the fragile bubble surrounding them won’t burst. Maybe time can stop, and they can stay locked in a moment where nothing can hurt him.

 

Graves moves, his arm slipping away, and the moment ends, leaving her almost breathless. She turns and sees that he is awake, looking up at the ceiling with a blank expression that seems strangely cracked at the edges.

 

Seraphina doesn’t bother trying to sugarcoat anything. That’s not who she is, fundamentally. It’s not who Graves is either, and she’s already given in enough by allowing herself one night of denial. “We need to talk.” she says.

 

He breathes out slowly and turns to look at her, a look of resignation on his face. “Yes.” he says. “I suppose we do.”

 

But when Seraphina opens her mouth, there are no words. The loss of magic – it’s not something she thought would ever even touch her life, a looming but far-away evil not unlike the monsters of her childhood stories, the red caps of Civil War battlefields and the rougarous of the Louisiana swamps.

 

Only it’s different too, because the possibility of losing one’s magic is never even spoken about aloud, only alluded to with horrified glances, an idea touched upon and then just as quickly abandoned, as if the mere thought might conjure it into reality. A witch’s or wizard’s magic is so intricately a part of themselves, so interwoven with their identity that losing it is equivalent almost to losing one’s soul, and maybe it’s only natural then that the topic is treated as just as much a taboo as the horrifyingly dark magic of splitting souls.

 

Seraphina doesn’t know how to even begin to speak about it, how to even begin dissecting what essentially amounts to something worse than a death sentence. _We need to talk,_ she said, and they do, she knows they do, but what is there to say? What words won’t fall flat in the face of what awaits Graves?

 

“It’s okay.” he says, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s been silent for minutes, lost in the vastness of her desperate thoughts. “It’s alright, Sera, I don’t want reassurances. Just be pragmatic.”

 

The resigned tone with which he says it almost makes her cry again – she isn’t so sure whether for him or for herself – but she bites her tongue and chokes the tears back. Pragmatism has been her defining characteristic almost all her life; she can find it now, even under the piles of twisted fear and guilt and heartache.

 

Seraphina clears her throat, takes a breath. “We need to talk to Laszlo again.” she says. “Make sure this is his top priority. Maybe he has some contacts he can reach out to as well, some people who might know something. I want the healers to run some more tests too, so we can get a clearer picture of the effects whatever curse Grindelwald used had on you. And, well, I think we should contact Albus Dumbledore. There are rumors he and Grindelwald were close once; he might know more than any of us.”

 

It actually makes her feel better listing off tasks like that, giving a structure to the terrifying uncertainty that stretches before them. Graves, however, has turned his face towards the ceiling again, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

 

He speaks after what feels like a small eternity, his voice carefully steady and expressionless. “Those all seem like good ideas.”

 

Seraphina sees it then – the flash of shame in his eyes, darkening his face for the briefest second – and realizes with a jolt what this must mean for him. Being vulnerable in front of her, who he’s known and trusted for years, is something very different from revealing the fact that Percival Graves, arguably one of the most powerful wizards in America, is facing the loss of his magic to a number of healers and MACUSA employees.

 

“You don’t want anyone to know.” she says, not quite a question.

 

Graves tenses, draws in a shaky breath. For a moment she thinks he’ll deny it, keep up his iron façade even for her, but then he begins to speak very quietly. “It’s just… Sera, I already messed up by letting him get to me.  If people realize what he did, what he took… how can I ever look any of them in the eye again?”

 

He swallows visibly, and Seraphina feels the shards inside her chest again, pushing against her ribcage as they slice their way through her lungs. A part of what Graves is saying is pride, and if it was only that she’d tell him to get over it, but she knows him better than she sometimes knows herself, and so she also knows that there’s more to it.

 

Both she and Graves were raised in much the same way, brought up to believe that weakness is something they can never afford to show in a world where power is the only currency that counts. This, having his magic taken away, is the ultimate weakness, and admitting it to anyone goes against every fiber of Graves’ being, against every part of his personality. How can she ask him to do it, how can she ask him to give up even more of what makes him himself?

 

And yet – how can she not, when it might save him?

 

Seraphina sits, reaches out and squeezes Graves’ hand. He doesn’t pull away, at least; she’ll take any small comfort she can get.

 

“Percival, I’m sorry.” she says, and hates herself a little bit for saying it. “I know this is not what you want. But you want to live, right?

 

The moment it takes him to answer is too long. Seraphina feels her heart sink even before he speaks, feels the breath go out of her lungs and leave her gasping for air. “I’m not so sure about that.” he says, still not looking at her, his voice low and bitter. “If I can’t use my magic, is there even really a point?”

 

The anger comes abruptly, shocking her heart back into rhythm and making her blood boil. She yanks her hand away, glares at Graves with the kind of expression that makes everyone but him cower.

 

“A point? Are you serious?” she asks, her voice not as steady as she would like it, but instead shaky with anger and frustration. “The fucking point, Percival, is that you’d be alive. You can’t be honestly considering just giving up and letting Grindelwald have his triumph. This isn’t you. This isn’t the man I know.”

 

Graves’ gaze snaps to meet hers. “Well, I’m not exactly the man you know anymore!”

 

Seraphina stares, taken aback, but before she has the chance to say something Graves sits up, running one hand through his too-long black hair. “Sera, this… this isn’t giving up.” he says, visibly trying to compose himself. “Giving up implies that there’s even still a fight going on, but there isn’t. It’s over. He won. Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that.”

 

She scoffs. “That’s bullshit and you know it. Nothing’s over yet. We can still figure something out.”

 

Graves gives a dry, joyless laugh. “I appreciate your optimism.” he says. “And I might’ve agreed with you, before. But I know Grindelwald better than you do, Sera. There’s no wiggle-room with him, no cracks to slip through in his plans. Neither of us is a match for him, believe me.”

 

Seraphina raises her chin, thinks suddenly of her father and the way he’d wrap himself in steel and determination and march through anything thrown at him. Yes, Grindelwald is brilliant, and perhaps more powerful than she is, but she is Romain Picquery’s daughter, the brightest witch of her age and the president of MACUSA, and there is no way she’s going to back down to an insane, power-hungry blood purist like Grindelwald.

 

“I’ll believe that when I see it.” she says coldly. “As of now, he hasn’t beaten any of us. He’s in prison, in case you’ve forgotten.”

 

The bitter resignation on Graves’ face disappears, giving way to a frustrated sort of anger. “For Merlin’s sake, Sera, you don’t get it!” he snaps. “Grindelwald, he… he destroyed me, okay? He took everything from me, _everything._ He did beat me. And it doesn’t matter that he’s in prison, because he’s still… he’s still here, Sera, every time I close my eyes or try to use my magic or do any fucking thing at all. He’s still winning, winning and winning and beating me all over again. So believe me when I tell you that there is _no goddamned point._ ”

 

And just like that his shoulders sag, as if his anger has been the only thing still keeping him upright. Seraphina feels her onwn anger implode, all the fire gone out of it in the face of how hurt, how broken and traumatized and scared Graves really is.

 

Hesitantly, almost nervously, she reaches out and touches his shoulder. She feels useless, helpless, unable to do anything to ease his suffering, and at the same time she feels ashamed that she’s even considering her own feelings when his are of a magnitude she can’t even comprehend.

 

“I won’t give up on you.” she says quietly, hoping desperately that some of her clumsy, empty words will at least get through to Graves. “I won’t. I don’t care what Grindelwald did to you, or how you think he’s destroyed you, because… Merlin, Percival, I love you. You know that, right?”

 

It feels almost like a weight is being lifted, finally admitting what she’s always known deep inside – that she never stopped loving him, no matter how hard she tried not to, that he is the only man she’s ever loved, that loving him is like breathing and she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. It shouldn’t feel that relieving, should instead fill her with a sense of dread because she’s essentially putting her career that she’s worked for her entire life on the line for him, but nothing like that ever comes.

 

Graves turns his head slightly, looks at her from hooded eyes. “You do?” he echoes weakly.

 

Seraphina shrugs a little awkwardly, gives him a half-smile. “Of course I do.” she says. “I always have. And when we didn’t find you, I thought… I thought I’d lost you. I’m not going through that again. I’ll do whatever it takes, Percival.”

 

Graves is very still for a moment. Then he says: “You shouldn’t have to, Sera. This is my mess. I don’t… I love you, and I don’t want you to get hurt because of me.”

 

Her chest swells with something that somehow feels like both agony and bliss. She scoots closer to Graves and presses a feathery kiss to his bare shoulder, breathing in his familiar scent. “That’s not how this works.” she whispers. “We’re in this together. So please, _please,_ let me try and help you. Let me bear some of the load.”

 

A few seconds pass like small eternities. Then, abruptly, Graves turns and kisses her, drawing her to him almost roughly. “Alright.” he says when he pulls away. “Alright. But don’t get your hopes up, Sera.” 

 

Seraphina squares her jaw. _How can I not, when this is about you,_ she thinks, but she doesn’t say anything.

 

* * *

 

She wants to accompany him to see the healers again, but Graves tells her not to and he’s probably right, so she only squeezes his arm briefly when they part in front of the elevators. He flashes her a brief smile; it doesn’t reach his eyes, but she’ll take it nonetheless.

 

Seraphina isn’t sure she can bring herself to face the catacombs again today, so instead she sends Laszlo a memo asking him to her office. He arrives half an hour later, out of breath and with something that looks like ashes caught in his beard.

 

“Sorry, Madam President.” he says. “Couldn’t tear myself away any sooner. I was working on… well, you know.”

 

Seraphina thinks of the obscurus, of its swirling, writhing mass of darkness, and feels her chest tighten ever so slightly. The obscurus and its powers might be the key to unlocking Grindelwald’s true plans, and here she is, about to tell Laszlo to focus his attention on saving a single man instead.

 

It’s wrong, a part of her knows it is, but she tells herself it doesn’t really matter. Grindelwald is in custody, the obscurus inside the Barebone boy destroyed – what harm will it do to put the research on hold for a while and focus instead on saving Graves, who has dedicated his whole life to the protection of wizardkind and who has lost more to Grindelwald than any of them?

 

_(Graves, who she doesn’t think she could breathe without.)_

“About that.” Seraphina says, immensely thankful for the years of practice that keep her voice steady. “I want you to divert your attention from the obscurus for a while.”

 

Laszlo’s bushy grey eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”

 

She sighs wearily and points to one of the chairs opposite her grand oaken desk. “Sit.” she says.

 

Laszlo takes a seat without a word, staring at her from his eerily bright blue eyes. He’s been with MACUSA for almost forty-five years, much longer than she has, and he was a cursebreaker before he moved to the catacombs, known for effortlessly breaking curses that no one else dared to go near to. Laszlo is not a man who misses things, and for a moment Seraphina fears that he’s going to see right through her, that he’s going to see her feelings for Graves written in every line of her face.

 

“To be clear, I want the obscurus research to continue.” she says. “But I want some of your colleagues to run point on it. Simmons, for example; I hear she’s very capable.”

 

“Not as capable as I am.” It’s not a boast, it’s just a fact. Seraphina straightens unconsciously.

 

“I know that.” she says. “I have the utmost confidence in you, Laszlo. That’s why I want you on something else.”

 

She sees the exact moment he realizes what she’s talking about. A muscle in his jaw twitches, but his voice is very neutral when he says: “Director Graves.”

 

Seraphina swallows, forces herself to take a slow, steady breath. “Yes.” she says after a moment. “I trust he told you Grindelwald did something to his magic?”

 

“Only very vaguely.” Laszlo admits. “It is worse, then, than he told me?”

 

 _So much worse,_ she thinks, her heart constricting with a vicious stab of pain. _He’s dying, and a part of him wants to, and I don’t know what to do._ But what she says is simply: “Yes.”

 

Laszlo looks at her, his blank face a question, and she begins to tell him, willing herself to detach from the words, to pretend they don’t really concern her, because she doesn’t think she could bear to say them otherwise. “The curse Grindelwald used, it didn’t just weaken Graves’ magic.” she says. “It’s taking it away, a little more every time he uses any sort of magic.”

 

She doesn’t have to explain what that means. Laszlo knows, a knowledge visible in the way his eyes widen with shock and his whole body tenses abruptly. “Mercy Lewis.” he mutters. “If I’d known… all he told me was that his magic wasn’t working the way it’s supposed to.”

 

Seraphina grimaces. It’s very Graves-like to downplay something this horrifically, and she suspects Laszlo knows that too, but she doesn’t think he had any sort of idea about the full extent of what Graves was keeping from him.

 

“You see why I need you on this, then.” she says, and feels her composed mask beginning to strain at the edges. “You have my full permission to do whatever you need to do. Look for precedence; contact any associates you think might know something. I don’t think I need to tell you that time is of the essence.”

 

Laszlo nods slowly. “’Course, Madam President.” he says, and then he hesitates.

 

He doesn’t need to say anything else. She can see what he’s thinking on his face, the same thing Graves said to her earlier. _Don’t get your hopes up._

“Don’t worry.” she says, and her next words feel like she’s plunging a knife into her own chest and twisting it around until she’s soaked in crimson. “I know that no one ever survived something like this.”

 

Briefly, she sees something like sympathy flicker across his wrinkled face before he clears his throat and squared his shoulders. “I’ll do everything I can.” he says. “Is there anything else, Madam President?”

 

Seraphina takes a shaky breath, forces her mask back into place with all the willpower she can muster. “No, Laszlo, thank you. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”

 

For a moment she thinks he’s going to say something else, but then he stands and leaves her office with a curt nod, leaving Seraphina alone with blood pouring from a wound that isn’t there.

 

She thinks again of her father, who told her once that loving someone only means making yourself vulnerable. He was right, was right most of the time, in fact, and yet Seraphina can’t bring herself to regret loving Graves for even a second. Perhaps that is, fundamentally, where she and her father differ. Perhaps she isn’t as similar to him as she always thought.

 

She closes her eyes, thinks of when she and Graves were young and everything was easier and they were so, so, so in love. _This is what I’m fighting for,_ she thinks. _This is it, and I’m not going to let Grindelwald take it away._

The pain is a bit more bearable when she opens her eyes again, and reaches out to write a letter to Albus Dumbledore.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, again, for the long wait. I've actually had this chapter nearly completely written for a while, but someone very close to me died recently and I didn't really feel like writing or uploading. Anyway, Tina makes an appearance in this chapter, so I hope you guys like it!

Dumbledore’s answer arrives after four days.

 

Seraphina spends those four days in a haze, oddly detached from everything that’s happening. Graves is still staying at her apartment, obviously not able to bring himself to go back to the place where Grindelwald got to him, and she certainly isn’t about to make him. He always seems alright during the day, and bears the healers’ ongoing tests with a resigned air of calmness, but he barely sleeps at night, and when he does he usually jolts back awake pale and shaking, unwilling to tell her what he’s been dreaming about.

 

They don’t talk again, at least not about the looming evil that hangs about everything they do like a dark cloud. All they do is wait in a sort of breathless limbo, suspended by a thin thread of hope with a dark abyss below them.

 

(Except, well, Seraphina isn’t actually sure Graves has any hope left. She’s holding on for the both of them, and it’s exhausting, so goddamned exhausting.)

 

The letter, then, is almost a ray of light, because it at least means that _something_ is happening, something else besides watching Graves suffer or passing Laszlo in the hallway only to see him shake his head minutely. It’s delivered by a majestic eagle owl that seems completely unperturbed by having just made the journey across the Atlantic Ocean, and that swoops out of her office window as soon as Seraphina has taken the carefully rolled-up piece of parchment from its leg.

 

Her hands are shaking when she unrolls the letter, addressed to _Madam Seraphina Picquery, President of the Magical Congress of the United States of America_ in a slanted, elegant handwriting. She holds her breath the whole time she’s reading it, her heart beating at double its usual speed.

 

_Dear Madam Picquery,_

_I was deeply troubled to hear of Director Graves’ condition. I have, unfortunately, never heard of such a curse as you describe, and I was not aware of Grindelwald working on developing it when I knew him. It bears some semblance, however, to a number of medieval curses I have once read about in passing; I will contact a close friend of mine who is an expert on such peculiar and ancient magic. Naturally, I will let you know all he tells me._

_I am sorry I cannot do more for you at this point. Best wishes to both you and Director Graves._

_Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore_

Seraphina breathes out slowly, not sure what she’s feeling. Relief, because this isn’t nothing, or disappointment, because it isn’t really anything either? It’s all muddled together, her emotions a stormy sea that she can’t make out anything in anymore.

 

She makes a conscious decision to settle on relief, simply because she doesn’t think she can take any more disappointment. But then, of course, there’s still the question of whether to tell Graves about Dumbledore’s letter. Would it do any good, really, for her to give him only more maybes and not-sures, something they’re both already getting plenty of by Laszlo and the healers?

 

Seraphina takes another breath and taps the letter with her wand, making it flutter to one of the drawers in her desk. Better to wait to tell Graves until Dumbledore gives her anything more substantiated. He’s trying to put on a brave face, sure, but she knows he’s not in any shape to handle any more disappointment or bad news.

 

There’s a knock on her office door a moment later. She rubs her forehead with a sigh, steeling herself once more before she says: “Come in.”

 

It’s Lockwood, huffing and puffing like he ran up here all the way from the department of Magical Law Enforcement. “Madam President.” he says, trying very hard to catch his breath. “Can I have a word? It’s urgent.”

 

“Of course.” she says, pasting a magnanimous smile on her face. “Please, sit.”

 

Lockwood drops into the chair on the other side of her desk heavily, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “It’s about those followers of Grindelwald we were tracking.” he says.

 

Seraphina’s eyebrows shoot up. “Any news?” she asks, unable to suppress the tiny flicker of hope inside her chest, even as she tells herself that it’s probably nothing. Realism has never done much for her when it comes to anything even remotely concerning Graves.

 

“We followed the paper trail to Philadelphia.” Lockwood says. “But it went cold there. We could find no sign of any magical disturbance, or any attack on no-majs. Well – except…”

 

He trails off, and Seraphina glares at him sharply. “Except what?” she prompts.

 

Lockwood squirms in his seat, wringing his hands in his lap. “Goldstein – you told me to take her, surely you recall – she has this theory. Very far-fetched, of course; ridiculously improbable, if you ask me. I wouldn’t want to trouble you with it, Madam President; it’s quite irrelevant. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

 

“I want to hear it.” Seraphina says without thinking. Graves has praised Goldstein’s instincts multiple times, and she’s proven her skill during the whole Grindelwald fiasco too; in truth, Seraphina is inclined to believe the woman’s instincts over Lockwood’s any time, even though she’s only met her a handful of times.

 

Lockwood looks taken aback. “Madam President, I don’t think…” he begins to say, but she interrupts him, perhaps a bit too sharply.

 

“Send Goldstein to my office.” she says, her voice firm in a way she knows makes people want to follow her orders. “I believe she’s the one with the most insight into her own theory. I’ll decide how relevant it is once I’ve heard it.”

 

She can see Lockwood’s hurt pride clearly on his face and knows she should probably try to soothe it, make sure he remains a loyal supporter, but she can’t deny the flicker of satisfaction she feels, and so she stays silent. After a moment, he squares his shoulders. “Very well.” he says stiffly. “I will send Goldstein up.”

 

Seraphina gives him a thin-lipped smile. “Thank you.” she says. “And please, do continue to keep me updated on anything related to Grindelwald and his followers. Just because we’ve arrested the man doesn’t mean he isn’t still a threat.”

 

Lockwood nods jerkily and get to his feet. “Yes, Madam President, quite right.” he says. “I’ll get back to work, then. Good day.”

 

He breezes out of her office with the air of someone who’s been deeply wronged, and not for the first time Seraphina regrets having someone who thinks so much of himself as Graves’ replacement. She doubts someone like McConnell would have taken any offense at her wanting to hear Goldstein’s theory.

 

For all his flaws, Lockwood does keep his word; half an hour later, there’s a tentative knock on her office door. At Seraphina’s “Come in”, Goldstein enters, looking like she expects to be in trouble. “You wanted to see me, Madam President?” she asks timidly.

 

Seraphina nods. “I did.” she says, and points towards the chair opposite her desk. “Please, Miss Goldstein, sit.”

 

She takes a seat, fidgeting in her lap. Seraphina is suddenly vividly reminded of herself, all those years ago when she was a young and hopeful auror just like Goldstein. Perhaps that is why she feels inclined to trust Graves’ assessment of her, despite barely knowing her; the young woman is almost a mirror image of who Seraphina once was, before she gave it all up for a career in politics.

 

“There’s no need to be nervous.” she says, feeling her lips move towards the tiniest of smiles. “Lockwood told me you had a theory about why Grindelwald’s followers were in Philadelphia. I would like to hear it.”

 

Goldstein stares at her, obviously baffled. So Lockwood did not tell her why she was wanted in the president’s office. No wonder she seemed so nervous, Seraphina thinks. She has a hunch that’s exactly what Lockwood intended, scaring Goldstein as petty payback for having a theory while he had none.

 

“My… theory?” Goldstein echoes.

 

Seraphina nods again. “Yes.” she says, and then, after a moment of hesitation, she adds: “Director Graves thinks very highly of you, you know.”

 

Goldstein blushes furiously, but the praise seems to have accomplished exactly what Seraphina intended it to; after visibly composing herself, she begins to speak.

 

“It’s more of a hunch, really, not exactly a theory.” Goldstein says. “The Weiss family resides in Philadelphia – you know them, right? Descended from one of the original twelve?”

 

She barely waits for Seraphina’s nod before she continues, as if now that she’s started speaking she can’t keep the words in any longer. “Well, the wards at their estate were tripped two days ago. When they went to check they didn’t find anyone, and nothing was stolen either. They didn’t report it; I only learned about it because I heard Everett Weiss complain about it to Lockwood.”

 

She pauses, takes a breath. “You believe it wasn’t a coincidence.” Seraphina says.

 

It’s not quite a question, but Goldstein shakes her head nevertheless. “No.” she says. “The Weiss family owns the only known copy of _De Natura Magicae._ I think Grindelwald’s followers tried to break in to get a look at that book, maybe even steal it.”

 

Seraphina’s heard about the book, of course, but even she didn’t know the Weiss family owned it; she wonders how Goldstein can possibly have learned about it. She doesn’t push, though; instead she asks: “What would Grindelwald’s followers want with that book?”

 

Goldstein blushes again, averts her gaze. When she finally replies, her voice is barely louder than a whisper. “There are rumors. About Director Graves.”

 

Seraphina feels her chest tighten. Of course she expected that on some level; with the healers and Laszlo knowing about Graves exact condition and various high-ranking officials knowing at least the basics, it was only a matter of time before people all over MACUSA started talking. Still, hearing that his aurors, the very people whose respect Graves values the most, are talking about him behind his back while he’s at his lowest makes her fingers twitch with the urge to hex someone.

 

“What kind of rumors?” she asks coldly.

 

Goldstein doesn’t look at her when she answers, squirming in her seat much like Lockwood was just a short time ago. “They say Grindelwald took his magic.” she says so quickly Seraphina can barely understand her, as if she wants to get the words out as fast as possible. “I thought that maybe, with Grindelwald in prison, his followers want to know how he did it. That book would be a good place to start.”

 

She waits, breathless, in the silence that follows. Seraphina’s heart is beating too fast, blood pulsing in her ears. Goldstein’s right; it’s more a hunch than a theory, more ground in suspicion and instinct than facts, but it’s a good hunch, and more than that. It’s a hunch that, if it’s right, could lead to information about what happened to Graves.

 

Seraphina takes a breath. “What do you know about the book?” she asks, keeping her face as blank as she can manage.

 

Goldstein looks up, meeting her eye. Seraphina half expects her to avert her gaze again, but she holds steady. “Not much.” she says. “But that’s not all. I was looking into the whole thing, before Lockwood sent me up here. A year ago, the Weiss mansion was broken into. They reported that one, even though nothing was stolen.”

 

She doesn’t have to continue. Seraphina feels her blood run cold, heart missing a beat in a mixture of shock and a desperate sort of hope. “You think it was Grindelwald.” she says flatly, the realization heavy in her throat. “You think the book is where he got his ideas.”

 

Goldstein only nods. Dimly, Seraphina thinks that Graves was right. The girl has phenomenal instincts, and a razor-sharp mind that Lockwood and a lot of other MACUSA employees are sorely lacking. No wonder Grindelwald demoted her when he was posing as Graves; she probably would’ve seen through his disguise within weeks.

 

Seraphina’s own mind is racing, jumping to conclusions. If Goldstein is right – and a part of her is sure that she is – then the book might be the key to getting Graves’ magic back, to saving his life. She is aware, of course, that Goldstein might be wrong, that she might just believe her because she is so desperate to save Graves she can’t think rationally anymore, but Seraphina can’t let her mind go there, not when this is the first real, tangible hope she’s had so far. The letter from Dumbledore lies forgotten in its drawer, faded next to what Goldstein has told her.

 

“Right.” Seraphina says, straightening as she makes a split-second decision. “Do you have any plans tomorrow, Goldstein?”

 

The young woman looks at her, stunned. “I… don’t.” she says slowly, tentatively. “Why?”

 

Seraphina gives her a grim, joyless smile. “Because we’re going to go Philadelphia.” she says. “I need to have a look at that book.”

 

She knows Everett Weiss – he’s a proud man, and thinks very highly of himself and his worth. He’s not going to even admit to owning _De Natura Magicae_ if she sends a squadron of aurors, but if she goes herself, gracing him with the presence of the president, then he might just be convinced to grant her a look at his precious book. And Goldstein – well, Goldstein deserves to go, because she’s the one who figured this out in the first place.

 

For a moment Goldstein stares, mouth agape. Then she nods enthusiastically. “Yes!” she exclaims. “I mean, no. I don’t have any plans.”

 

“Excellent.” Seraphina says. “I will let Lockwood know that you’re exempted from his service tomorrow. And I would thank you if you didn’t relate details about what we’re going to do to anyone.”

 

Goldstein nods again, seeming slightly dazed, as if she can’t quite believe she’s really going to go on a mission with the president herself. Seraphina finds herself suddenly, with a deep ache, wishing she was more like her again, so young and naïve and hopeful.

 

The young woman stands, makes for the door, but just as she reaches for the handle she turns again. “How is he?” she asks hesitantly. “Director Graves, I mean.”

 

Seraphina lets out a shaky sigh. Her chest constricts with the sharp pain she’s almost used to by now, her hands clenching into fists beneath her desk. How is she supposed to put anything of what happened to him into words, how is she supposed to give an answer to that question that doesn’t make he want to scream?

 

“He is… hanging on.” she says finally. “But this, Goldstein, this might really help. You’ve done good work.”

 

Goldstein smiles. “Thank you, Madam President.” she says. A moment later she’s gone, and Seraphina feels lighter than she can remember feeling in weeks.

 

* * *

 

The hope that Goldstein’s theory gave her carries her through the rest of the day, even though the lightness in her chest dissipates eventually, giving way to the familiar ache. When she finally apparates home, long after darkness has fallen, Graves is sitting on the sofa in her living room, staring blankly at the opposite wall.

 

“Hey.” she says softly. “How are you feeling?”

 

It’s a stupid question, she knows that, and Graves grimaces in reply. “I’m not feeling worse.” he says. “So that’s something, I guess.”

 

Seraphina sits down next to him, squeezes his hand, and feels him relax into her just the slightest bit, like he’s allowing himself to let go of some of the tension. “I talked to Goldstein today.” she says.

 

Graves shoots her a sidelong glance. “Why?” he asks, forehead furrowed.

 

Seraphina hesitates. She doesn’t want to give Graves false hope, because she knows all too well that hope can be the most dangerous emotion of them all, but she also doesn’t think she can hold on for the both of them a moment longer, doesn’t think she can bear another second of hoping and wishing as hard as she can while Graves seems to have given up completely.

 

After a moment she straightens and settles on the truths, the cold facts, letting Graves conclude from them what he wants. He is silent while she tells him about the Weiss family’s book, about tracking Grindelwald’s followers there, about the break-in a year ago, and when she is done he lets out a slow, measured breath.

 

“It’s a solid theory.” he says quietly, and Seraphina feels something in her chest unclench, as if she’s just been waiting for his approval like a schoolgirl with a crush.

 

“I thought so, too.” she says. “That’s why I’m going to head to Philadelphia tomorrow. I figure if I go myself, Weiss will let me take a look at that book. It might give Laszlo something to work with.”

 

“Yeah.” Graves mutters. “It might.”

 

He doesn’t seem convinced in the slightest, and Seraphina can feel the way he’s tensed against her once more. Her throat feels suddenly too tight, her breath stumbling and catching as her heart breaks for him. But there’s not just that – there’s also anger, frustration, because why can’t he just hope a little, give her anything but this awful resignation?

 

“Percival, you promised you’d let me try and help.” she says, her voice coming out sharper than she’s intended it to, half because she’s angry at him, half because she’s annoyed at how selfish she’s being in wishing he would carry the load of hoping and searching with her. “Don’t shoot this plan out of the water just because you’re so determined to give up.”

 

Graves pulls away abruptly and glares at her, though the exhaustion marking his face takes away much of the sting. “I’m not determined to give up, Sera!” he snaps. “I tried to explain it to you already. Grindelwald is better than all of us. He wouldn’t mess up by tripping the Weiss wards. His followers, sure, but not him. You going there is probably exactly what he wants.”

 

She sets her jaw stubbornly. “Yeah, well, I don’t care.” she says, aware that she’s sounding a petulant child but not really caring. “If there’s even any chance of anything, I’m going. I told you I’d do whatever it takes.”

 

His anger vanishes as quickly as it has come. His mouth opens, a muscle in his jaw twitching as if he means to say something else, but what he finally settles on is: “I’m sorry.”

 

Seraphina mouth fills with coppery guilt, and she leans forward to kiss his cheek, rough with stubble. “Don’t be.” she says. “Just… have a little faith in me, yeah?”

 

Graves gives her a pained smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “My faith in you is not the problem, Sera.”


End file.
